On 28/09/2023 18:46, PaulHuxe wrote:
> Today I wanted to reinstall POV-ray after several years of interruption.
> 
> I found the 3.8 beta version with your link to GITHUB, and saw that nothing has
moved since 2021.
> There are only two people are linked to this project. And both of them have zero
activity the last year.

I'm one of the two committers you mention. Like Le_Forgeron, I'm getting old (in my
60's now). Plus I haven't used C++ in anger for a long time; I'm a fully C# dev in my
day job.

After around 30 years with the project I see my role as more a steward; a maintainer
of stability and backwards compatibility than a developer of 'new things' (e.g.
changes in 3.8). POV-Ray is a mature program with a long history of stability.
Currently version 3.7 is working as designed and while it doesn't have all of the
bells and whistles of 3.8 I'm not currently ready to replace it myself. That's not to
say I won't merge 3.8's changes in, but if it happens it won't be until I've sorted
out a few other things.

One of the reasons we moved to the AGPL was to encourage other people to fork POV and
experiment, and this has happened to a certain extent. Those forks are the place to go
if you want to try out new ideas.

So, no, POV-Ray development is not "dead"; we're still here but somewhat short on
manpower. For a more than 30-year-old program, not having a new release for many years
is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as everything is working and there is an
active community. There will be a 3.8 release, eventually.

> I searched for the 4.0 repository and saw that there are no new commit since july
2021.

4.0 won't likely have any activity until 3.8 is released, IMO.

-- Chris (current team leader and developer since the Compuserve days).

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